


everything we were and are

by Argella



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: M/M, allusions to reddie, maybe more in the second chapter, not super heavy hanbrough but it might be in the second chapter?? who knows, run on sentences galore, run on thoughts, second person mike pov, who even knows what this is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argella/pseuds/Argella
Summary: They come across you--enter saviors, stage left--and you expect them to leave right after, to accept your thanks then rush off, off to do what they do, a pair of 6, a perfect even number. The quarry, the arcade, the park, things you hear kids your age do and places they go with each other. Things you’ve never done, places you haven’t dared go.But they don’t.before and after
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	everything we were and are

**Author's Note:**

> so here i am, trying to work on my reddie bigbang project so my artist doesn't hate me, and instead i start thinking in run on, second person sentences about mike because 1) i love him and 2) i love hanbrough so this might be the worst thing ive ever written but it demanded to be written, what are you gonna do about it

before

They come across you--enter saviors, stage left--and you expect them to leave right after, to accept your thanks then rush off, off to do what they do, a pair of 6, a perfect even number. The quarry, the arcade, the park, things you hear kids your age do and places they go with each other. Things you’ve never done, places you haven’t dared go.

But they don’t. Instead they bring you along with them, and you’re sucked in for just a moment before the moment pops. And boy is that moment great. The group had seemed so together, a perfect joining of spirits, kids with different backgrounds and different roles but bonded by childhood and summer and the horrors that come with not fitting in in this town. But they’re not. Eddie gets hurt and fingers are pointed and the moment pops. You’re off, back to the farm, back to your family--what’s left of it--back to death and monotony, a routine you expect to keep the rest of your life because what else could you possibly hope to do? What else could you do in this rotten, horrible town where nobody accepts you (except them, they did) and you can’t get out? (Sometimes, late at night, when the crickets are chirping in a loud chorus, the hum felt by your ears but also in your bones. you think about leaving--going to a big city where nobody knows you but _wants_ to know you. Where the color of your skin isn’t what determines the outcome of your life.)

You come back together eventually, after weeks alone, cowering in fear over It and the grim fantasies it had thrown at you. And despite what you’re going into, despite how little you know about them, it feels right. Like in this world and every other world you would team up to go save Bev--and you know they would do the same for you, you don’t know how you know but you do. So you walk through that door with them, heart hammering in your chest and you come out alive. More alive then you’ve ever felt, because you defeated It and that perfect six has become a perfect seven and you know you’ve forged friendships that will last a lifetime.

Only it doesn’t stay that way. Bev leaves soon after, her absence a hole in the group that they cover up with trips to the quarry and sleepovers on Friday nights. She doesn’t call and Bill’s glum for what feels like a lifetime--Ben too, but he’s better at hiding it.

But the swimming trips continue, and school starts, and you still see your friends--they make time for you, the homeschooled boy that lives on the outskirts of town. Your time is carved out for them, just like your heart had been.

Ben leaves next. It was about that time, he said, but don’t worry, he’ll call and he’ll write, it won’t be like...There’s a pause here, an unsaid name that’s at the tips of all their tongues. They wrack their brains for it until Richie blurts it out. Bev. How could they forget Bev? Ben blushes red, Bill stutters, and they all move on from that, say their goodbyes to Ben, try to pointedly ignore the tears in his eyes, for his sake. And when you get home your own prick because you can feel it, that hole in your heart stretching, getting wider, a space for Ben where he was snatched right out of your lives.

You’re fifteen now and you’re taking on more work than ever but finally summer comes and with it lenience. Even Eddie’s mom lets up that summer, the chipping away at her resolve that he had started two summers ago getting bigger and bigger. You explore the Barrens, go bird watching with Stan, and suffer through Richie’s video game tutorials. But every now and then you’re biking through the streets, the five of you, and you turn back behind you, a smile on your lips, laughter ready to burst forth, only to see no one else. You choke on the laughter. It’s just the five of you.

And then it isn’t. Bill is leaving and the school year has only just started but his parents are divorcing and neither one is staying in Derry and maybe just maybe Bill doesn’t seem as sad about it as he should be. You confront him one night, when everyone else has biked off home, and you mention it, cautiously, because you’re wrong, aren’t you? Why would Bill want to leave? He’s the leader, the core of the group. Things had all come together because of Bill. You’re worried that he’s the glue holding the rest of you together.

He’s defensive and you’re embarrassed; he’s angry and you’re apologetic and then he can’t handle it, words tumbling from his lips because things aren’t fine, they haven’t been fine in years. And if his parents don’t want to see that empty bedroom--if he doesn’t want to see that empty bedroom anymore--then that’s their right, his right. He’s sad and he hugs you, he’ll miss you all he says, but Derry was no place for them, couldn’t you feel it?

He leaves a month later, at the end of September, and things are somber among the group for weeks. Richie’s impressions fall flat, Stan’s biting comments aren’t as sharp as they could be, and even Eddie and Richie’s bickering seems performative.

Bill never writes or calls. None of them expected him to. Ben never had and if anyone was going to it would be him.

Still, it hurts. You hated to admit that when the phone rang at home, part of you expected to hear his stuttering voice greeting you softly. Imagined speaking to him late into the night, asking him how things were between him and his mother, if the move was hard, if he’d made any new friends. Tell him how all of the animals were doing. What prank Richie had played on them the other day. But when the phone rings it’s never Bill, just like it’s never Bev or Ben. You take to squeezing your eyes shut when you hear it, teeth grinding as you tell yourself over and over in your head to stop setting yourself up for disappointment. Eventually you convince yourself it worked.

It turns out Bill wasn’t the glue. The Losers would be friends no matter what. They continue hanging around after school; playing board games in Richie’s basement, the smell of cigarettes clinging in the air, wrapped around Eddie’s complaints about secondhand smoke and Stan’s talks about college plans. They play chicken in the quarry, a perfect four (only when they’re done, panting, soaking in the quiet as they wade back to shore, the sun setting behind them, they feel loss; wonder how they could ever think four was the perfect number).

No, Bill wasn’t the glue. They weren’t some art project, held together by one person. They were a clubhouse, held up by seven individual support beams. Take one down and…

Things are calm until senior year; their habits stay the same. Then Stan and Eddie are next. College plans, for both of them. Stan had had Vanderbilt on the mind--Richie made fun of him for it for ages--and they all knew he’d get in. The perfect test scores, the essay, the extracurriculars--Stan had had a plan to get out of Derry and it had worked. Two weeks into summer break and he’s gone, having been accepted for their summer semester. He promises to call when he gets there--they all know he won’t, but it feels like he has to say it. A ritual almost. Like if maybe one of them said it hard enough, they would.

Eddie was reluctant about leaving while his mother was, surprisingly, enthusiastic. New York, he had decided. Big and loud and welcoming, that was where he had planned to end up. He wanted to leave as much as he wanted to stay. To get away from his mother’s suffocating chokehold, her lies; to stay with his friends, to stay where things were familiar.

But he gets that letter and he leaves. Like they always do. You suspect that he and Richie said their goodbyes already. Their hug is quick, perfunctory, not at all what you would expect of the two. Until Richie leans in, whispers something that has Eddie nodding his head frantically. You don’t hear what’s said and you don’t think you want to, feeling like a voyeur among your own friends.

When they’re done, Eddie turns to you, tears threatening to spill. You get a hug, a tight squeeze, and a sad “take care.” Then he’s gone and seven were six were five were four were three were two.

Richie lasts longer than you expect. You make as much of an effort as you can but Richie’s on edge, despondent one minute, excited the next. Waiting by the phone then staying with you, not going home for days at a time. You don’t know what his plans are. He talks of school and traveling and big cities and other countries. Stages and lights and making it on his own and making it with you.

Eventually he breaks it to you. That brief stint at the Aladdin sophomore year apparently lined his pockets more than you could ever have guessed. He’s going off, across the country, to California, and you should come with.

For a minute you think about it. Leaving it all behind, saying goodbye to nobody, just you and Richie. Maybe you could even track down the others and…

And what?

No, you have a life here. This is where you’re meant to be.

You stay here like you always knew you would. He looks up at you sadly from the driver’s seat of his car, backseat empty but for an overstuffed duffel bag. Your eyes meet his and you think you see your own feelings mirrored in his own. Hurt over someone who never called. A sinking, cloying feeling in your stomach about this town, something urging you to get out and to never come back. You ignore it, he doesn’t. 

His car sputters to life and you take one long lingering look at him, trying to memorize everything you can. You think he does the same. Few words are said between you before he drives off.

He’s the only one that didn’t make any promises of calling.

The years pass and you have time, so much time. Time to do nothing but think. Because they had forgotten, every single one of them had forgotten you and it hit you one day, out in the field, the sun sweltering as you look down at your hands and see how they’ve aged. Time has both flown past and dragged by, a lonely friendless existence. And when you look down and see those hands, your hands, you realize it aches. It aches so bad you feel like you’re going to have a heart attack. Your heart has six holes in it, six people that had taken a chunk of it with them and if you were missing that much could you really be alive at all?

How could they forget?

It’s that line, that one single question that consumes you. And now your time isn’t idle--it’s spent researching. Hours of it. The library becomes your home and people continue to pass you by as they have your whole life, and this is how you spend the years. Because it’s coming. You know it is.

And then the time is here. The time to finally reach out. You had considered it over the years--had even tried it when some were still here, only that hadn’t worked for reasons you’ve only just recently discovered. Your hands are shaking, you’re distraught that it’s come to this while tamping down the part of you that threatens to be happy.

They’re reluctant and confused but they come, all six of them, and for one night you’re happy, reminiscing and smiling. Giddiness palpable amongst you all because for once things feel right in your heart. You think they feel it too.

Your eyes meet Bill’s and you know he does. His eyes shine under the lights in the room when they meet yours. He’s both older and not; his smile reminiscent of the one of his youth. One that you had mapped the contours of, thought of constantly as a teenager, late at night in the darkness of your room when those crickets had kept you up; days when the group parted ways to head home for the night and you found yourself alone with him and your heart thumped out its own beat of _Bill, Bill, Bill_.

But that comes crashing down as soon as those cookies break open. You’re reminded of being thirteen again, terror flashing in you that only It can inspire. There’s yelling and anger and threats to leave and no, no, no you _have_ to do this.

So, you turn to the glue. To Bill. Only in all these years you seem to have forgotten that Bill isn’t the glue. He’s angry and accusing and you’re reminded of when he left, the fight you’d had. You’ve always looked up to him. The de facto leader that held a special place in your heart. Your head hangs in shame, but you can’t let it get to you.

All of you are needed to do this, to defeat It, and it’s not until you’ve all come together again, under your deceit, that you can manage to work together. They’re angry and upset once again and rightfully so but still, you’re the Losers, you always have been, and you come together and It’s heart is being crushed before your very eyes.

You all make it out and breathe fresh air. Eddie still needs medical attention--you likely all do--but you’re all out, into the sunshine, and the last twenty-seven years feel like they’ve been leading to this. You let out a laugh, nearly hysterical with thoughts of fate and friendships and connection and then they all join in, the silence of nature broken by loud guffaws and chortles and whoops.

You go to the quarry because where else would you all go after something like that? The quarry connects you all, it was one of your places. Bev jumps first, fearless as always, followed closely by Ben. Next is Stan, a sigh on his lips. Eddie makes a quip about the dirty quarry water--really, how do they all expect them to get clean in there--but then Richie is slipping a hand into Eddie’s, shutting him up. They jump together.

Then it’s just Bill standing beside you. He’s smiling at you, a small, exhausted looking thing. He pats you on the back, hand lingering a moment too long. You blame it on him being tired but a voice in your head whispers other things, reminds you of him clutching at you afterwards. You shake them off and jump before he can, tired of being the last one left.

When you surface it’s like you’ve jumped nearly three decades into the past, seeing your friends acting as they once did, like nothing ever changed.

You get distracted for but a moment and then Richie’s taking advantage of it, dunking your head under the water. Your lungs burn as you swallow some of it but you do the same in return, a lightness returning to you that you haven’t felt since you were thirteen and surrounded by these same people.

What comes next you don’t know. You think maybe this time promises to call will be fulfilled. That maybe the pieces of your heart that have been returned will stay there. You can only hope.


End file.
